The appropriation sub-committee in Parliament has blamed the low performances of ministries, departments and agencies on the “poor forecasts” in budgetary allocation on the ministry of finance.
In a hard-hitting report presented in parliament by the committee chairman, Claude Kamanda, MP, the committee observed that excepting the ministry of finance, agriculture and the road maintenance fund, the budgetary allocations to all the other MDAs assigned to the committee were “inadequate.”
“The allocations are far below the ceilings they had provided to MDAs during budget call circular. The ministry of finance had not done realistic budget forecast,” he said, adding that the committee was of the opinion that with a nine-month (January to September) budget history to bank on, the ministry should have avoided giving unattained ceilings to MDAs which created “a lot of unnecessary expectations and demands”.
He said that as a consequence the committee observed that the ministry of finance could not release the fourth quarter allocation for some MDAs in 2012 financial year.
“More seriously, many vote controllers complained of the ministry’s rejection of vouchers from the MDAs for that quarter. Whereas the committee acknowledged the constraints on the budget, it maintained the view that the ministry could have endeavoured to release part of the funds or otherwise, clearly notify the MDAs,” Kamanda said.
The committee noted that parliament had approved these allocations and was therefore the entitlements of the MDAs. The report added that there was a high rate of poor documentation of expenditure activities by most MDAs.
It agreed that oversight committees in parliament should employ this as a priority on their respective MDAs and observed that the ministry undertook expenditures on behalf of some MDAs and charged these as expenditures undertaken by the MDAs without notifying them.
“This action obstructs prudence in financial management and the Ministry of Finance must discourage such practice,” the committee chairman urged, and expressed dismay at the variances in the actual report by the ministry of finance in the parliamentary copy of details for 2011-2012 with the actual and voucher ledgers of the MDAs.
“Whereas the committee at first considered this as a misappropriation on the part of MDAs, upon conferring with the ministry of finance staff and during the scrutiny of the allocations of the very ministry, the committee observed that it was the ministry of finance that failed to indicate the real facts” the report says.
